4 The Significance of Religion
Those misconceptions about Buddhism as above stated induce me to digress in this introductory part and to say a few words concerning the distinction between the form and the spirit of religion. A clear knowledge of this distinction will greatly facilitate the formation of a correct notion about Mahâyânism and will also help us duly to appreciate its significance as a living religious faith.
By the spirit of religion I mean that element in religion which remains unchanged throughout its successive stages of development and transformation: while the form of it is the external shell which is subject to any modification required by circumstances.
It admits of no doubt that religion, as everything else under the sun, is subject to the laws of evolution, and that, therefore, there is no such thing as a revealed religion, whose teachings are supposed to have been delivered to us direct from the hands of an anthropomorphic or anthropopsychic supernatural being, and which, like an inorganic substance, remains forever the same, without changing, without growing, without modifying itself in accord with the surrounding conditions. Unless people are so blinded by a belief in this kind of religion as to insist that its dogmas have suffered absolutely no change whatever since its “revelation,” they must recognise like every clear-headed person the fact that there are some ephemeral elements in every religion, which must carefully be distinguished from its quintessence which remains eternally the same.
When this discrimination is not observed, prejudice will at once assert itself, inducing them to imagine that the religion in which they were brought up with all its truths and superstitions is the only orthodox religion in the world, and all the other religions are nothing else than heathenism, idolatry, atheism, apostasy, and the like. This attitude of such religionists, however, serves only to betray their own narrowness of mind and dimness of spiritual insight. No one who desires to penetrate into the innermost recesses of the human heart and who longs to feel the fullest meaning of life, should foster in himself in the least degree a disposition of bigotry.
Religion is the inmost voice of the human heart that under the yoke of a seemingly finite existence groans and travails in pain. Mankind, from their first appearance on earth, have never been satisfied with the finiteness and impermanency of life. They have always been yearning after something that will liberate them from the slavery of this mortal coil, or from the cursed bondage of metempsychosis, as Hindu thinkers express it. This something, however, on account of its transcending all the principles of separation and individuation, which characterise the phenomena of this mundane existence, has always remained as something indefinite, inadequate, chaotic, and full of mystery. And, according to different degrees of intellectual development in different ages and nations, people have endeavored to invest this mysterious something with all sorts of human feelings and intelligence. Most of modern scientists are now content with the hypothesis that the mystery is unfathomable by the human mind, which is conditioned by the law of relativity, and that our business here, moral as well as intellectual, can be executed without troubling ourselves with this ever-haunting problem of mystery;—this doctrine is called agnosticism.
But this hypothesis can in no wise be considered the final sentence passed on the mystery. From the scientific point of view, the maxim of agnosticism is excellent, as science does not pretend to venture into the realm of non-relativity. Dissatisfaction, however, presents itself, when we attempt to silence by this hypothesis the last demand of the human heart.
The human heart is not an intellectual crystal. When the intellect displays itself in its full glory, the heart still aches and struggles to get hold of something beyond. The intellect may sometimes declare that it has at last laid its hand on what is demanded by the heart. Time passes on, and the mystery is examined from the other points that escaped consideration before, and, to the great disappointment of the heart, the supposed solution is found to be wanting. The intellect is baffled. But the human heart never gets tired of its yearnings and demands a satisfaction ever more pressingly. Should they be considered a mere nightmare of imagination? Surely not, for herein lies the field where religion claims supreme authority, and its claim is perfectly right.
But religion cannot fabricate whatever it pleases; it must work in perfect accord with the intellect. As the essential nature of man does not consist solely in intellect, or will, or feeling, but in the coördination of these psychical elements, religion must guard herself against the unrestrained flight of imagination. Most of the superstitions fondly cherished by a pious heart are due to the disregard of the intellectual element in religion.
The imagination creates: the intellect discriminates. Creation without discrimination is wild: discrimination without creation is barren. Religion and science, when they do not work with mutual understanding, are sure to be one-sided. The soul makes an abnormal growth at one point, loses its balance, and is finally given up to a collapse of the entire system. Those pious religious enthusiasts who see a natural enemy in science and denounce it with all their energy, are, in my opinion, as purblind and distorted in their view, as those men of science who think that science alone must claim the whole field of soul-activities as well as those of nature. I am not in sympathy with either of them: for one is just as arrogant in its claim as the other. Without a careful examination of both sides of a shield, we are not competent to give a correct opinion upon it.
But the imagination is not the exclusive possession of religion, nor is discrimination or ratiocination the monopoly of science. They are reciprocal and complementary: one cannot do anything without the other. The difference between science and religion is not that between certitude and probability. The difference is rather in their respective fields of activity. Science is solely concerned with things conditional, relative, and finite. When it explains a given phenomenon by some fixed laws which are in turn nothing but a generalisation of particular facts, the task of science is done, and any further attempt to go beyond this, i.e., to make an inquiry into the whence, whither, and why of things, is beyond its realm. But the human soul does not remain satisfied here, it asks for the ultimate principle underlying all so-called scientific laws and hypotheses. Science is indifferent to the teleology of things: a mechanical explanation of them appeases its intellectual curiosity. But in religion teleology is of paramount importance, it is one of the most fundamental problems, and a system which does not give any definite conception on this point is no religion. Science, again, does not care if there is something beyond or outside its manifold laws and theories; but a religion which does not possess a God or anything corresponding to it, ceases to be so, for it fails to give consolation to the human heart.
The solution of religious problems, as far as they fall within the sphere of relative experience, is largely a matter of personal conviction, determined by one’s intellectual development, external circumstances, education, disposition, etc. The conceptions of faith thus formulated are naturally infinitely diversified; even among the followers of a certain definite set of dogmas, each will understand them in his own way, owing to individual peculiarities. If we could subject their conceptions of faith to a strict analysis as a chemist does his materials, we should detect in them all the possible forms of differentiation. But all these things belong to the exterior of religion and have nothing to do with the essentials which underlie them.
The abiding elements of religion come from within, and consist mainly in the mysterious sentiment that lies hidden in the deepest depths of the human heart, and that, when awakened, shakes the whole structure of personality and brings about a great spiritual revolution, which results in a complete change of one’s world-conception. When this mysterious sentiment finds expression and formulates its conceptions in the terms of intellect, it becomes a definite system of beliefs, which is popularly called religion, but which should properly be termed dogmatism, that is, an intellectualised form of religion. On the other hand, the outward forms of religion consist of those changing elements that are mainly determined by the intellectual and moral development of the times as well as by individual esthetical feelings.
True Christians and enlightened Buddhists may, therefore, find their point of agreement in the recognition of the inmost religious sentiment that constitutes the basis of our being, though this agreement does by no means prevent them from retaining their individuality in the conceptions and expressions of faith. My conviction is: If the Buddha and the Christ changed their accidental places of birth, Gautama might have been a Christ rising against the Jewish traditionalism, and Jesus a Buddha, perhaps propounding the doctrine of non-ego and Nirvâna and Dharmakâya.
However great a man may be, he cannot but be an echo of the spirit of the times. He never stands, as is supposed by some, so aloof and towering above the masses as to be practically by himself. On the contrary, “he,” as Emerson says, “finds himself in the river of the thoughts and events, forced onward by the ideas and necessities of his contemporaries.” So it was with the Buddha, and so with the Christ. They were nothing but the concrete representatives of the ideas and feelings that were struggling in those times against the established institutions, which were degenerating fast and menaced the progress of humanity. But at the same time those ideas and sentiments were the outburst of the Eternal Soul, which occasionally makes a solemn announcement of its will, through great historical figures or through great world-events.
Believing that a bit of religio-philosophical exposition as above indulged will prepare the minds of my Christian readers sincerely to take up the study of a religious system other than their own, I now proceed to a systematical elucidation of the Mahâyâna Buddhism, as it is believed at present in the Far East.